Disclaimer: Rukawa isn't mine, the New York Knicks aren't mine, yadayadayada. This is a work of fiction, any relevance to real people blah blah coincidental blah blah unintentional whatever.
This is just a prologue. I'll take ages to complete this, considering I have three other on-going fics to tackle, so don't say I didn't warn you.
I'm not sure what it is that's bothering me tonight. Maybe it's the dimly-lit room with its claustrophobic walls inching closer to me with every passing second. Maybe it's the loud, pulsing rock music that a live band is strumming loose, the wailing electric guitars seriously grating my eardrums. Maybe it's the lousy beer that I'm drinking, the ice long since melted.
Or maybe, just maybe, it's the fact that I'm all alone drinking diluted beer in a noisy, stifling pub on Valentine's Day.
If you're asking why I'm getting all sentimental on you, well, I couldn't begin to say. If you're asking why I even care, I'd award a thousand US dollars to the clever chap who can give me an answer. And believe me, I can certainly afford that thousand bucks and still have plenty leftover.
The irritating band is done with their set now, and in their place is a different one; interestingly, this new band is fronted by a female. An Asian female.
You don't get that combination much nowadays, especially not around here. It's times like these that really make me nostalgic of home.
"Hey," somebody suddenly says. I glance up from my beer mug, and see the bartender peering closely at me.
I flinch. I hated being stared at in high school, and I hate being stared at now. It makes me feel like some screwed up alien specimen in a sterilised laboratory.
I calmly take another sip from my mug, making a face at how vile American beer tasted -- especially when diluted to the extent mine is -- nevermind that I've been drinking it for the past five years. Hey, when a guy is pissed off, he has the right to complain about anything. It's in the United Nations human rights charter. Go look it up.
The bartender is either deliberately ignoring the fact that I'm ignoring him, or he's too dense to pick up on it; he doesn't go away.
"You're that Asian guy, right?" he drawls in his heavy New Yorker accent. "Top scorer of the Knicks? The guy who's gonna save the team? Man, you're awesome. Your plays really astound me."
Oh, I see. A fan. How nice. I'm so flattered to be labelled 'that Asian guy'. And 'saviour of the Knicks'? Right. Definitely flattering.
That stupid team is tattered beyond repair.
"Rukawa Kaede," I answer.
"Huh?"
"My name," I snap. "Rukawa Kaede."
I'm glaring at him, the intensity of my stare penetrating his casualness. Or so I hope.
"Say, can I have an autograph?"
Somehow, that's the final straw for me. This guy, this idiot, who thinks my plays are astounding but doesn't even know my name wants an autograph? What am I, an act in the freak show that is the American lust for popular culture? And who ever said I agreed to it?
I stand up, reach into my pocket and produce a ten-dollar note. I toss it onto the table and walk off, not giving another thought to my watered down beer, or the bartender's indignant cry of 'bastard!'.
It's difficult finding another place to sit in this crowded joke of a pub, so I decide to split. But as I stride towards the exit, I inadvertently catch a few riffs of the music drifting out of the amplifiers.
It makes me stop in my tracks as I listen closely. It's rock music of the rare and precious kind, not quite ballad and definitely not metal either. It's melodious without being sappy, angsty without being pretentious. It's a new kind of poetry altogether, I realise. Poetry that sings and haunts and touches, so rich in its power to entice and mesmerise that I forget that I was going to leave this stupid pub.
Music this good should not be played in a pub. Drunks don't know how to and cannot appreciate it. It belongs on a compact disc, played in some troubled teenager's bedroom, saving him from depression because he'd know that someone out there understands, just by listening to the record.
And it's somewhere during the second chorus -- "Reap the fruits of your labour/Sow the seeds of your fortune/But nothing has changed/And it all comes falling down" -- that I'm suddenly aware of something.
This song. It's familiar. As if I've heard it somewhere before.
I can't see the singer's face from where I am; she's hidden in the shadows, choosing to stay out of the spotlight to let her music to the talking.
For some reason, despite my seen-it-all-heard-them-all-they're-all-phonies cynicism, I know that it isn't just some meaningless stage gimmick. I move closer to the stage, meandering through the dense crowd -- half of the stoned, the other half drunk, moshing retardedly to a slow number -- and ignoring the surprised voices from people that recognise my New York Knicks blazer. I don't know what I'm hoping to find; I'm just letting intuition drive me.
I'm almost directly in front of the singer now, but I still can't see her face. But as I'm caught up once again in her music that speaks of eternal truths, it slips to the back of my mind, until it becomes nothing more than a nagging thought.
And when she's finished casting her spell on half-lives that aren't worth it, the stage lights come on.
"Arigatou gozaimasu," the singer murmurs into the microphone, her sultry voice making its way into my mind, just as I train my eyes on her face, just as I realise she spoke in Japanese.
And then, everything clicks.
****
For the first time in a long while, I'm actually nervous. I'm standing outside the backstage door, hands shoved into my pockets, trying to adopt a nonchalant stance that used to come easily to me but failing miserably now, waiting for... what? The door to open and for me to make a fool out of myself?
I sigh. Rukawa Kaede has officially become a world-class idiot.
Just as I'm about to push open the door, it flys open outward, hitting it squarely in the nose.
And it really, really hurts.
"Kuso," I swear under my breath. Rubbing my nose gingerly, I train my eyes on the son-of-a-bitchin' baka who actually has the gall to do something like that, preparing to set my features into a deadly scowl, when I suddenly freeze.
"I'm sorry," the baka in question is saying, her voice levelled and calm. "I didn't mean to do it. Did I hurt you?"
At the back of my mind I think of how stupid the question is, but I don't quite pick up on it. All I can do is gape at the person in front of me, wondering, rather dazedly, if this were a dream.
"Excuse me? Are you okay?"
"It's you," I stupidly blurt out.
The woman -- around twenty-four,
if memory serves -- frowns. "Uh-huh," she says, slight sarcasm creeping
into her voice. "Yes, and I'm your long-lost friend from Japan, right?
Because I look awfully familiar to you?"
Without waiting for a reply, she pushes past me, leaving me behind with only one thought: "Well, yes..."
Bruised nose forgotten, I go after her, my long strides catching up with her in a matter of seconds.
"I'm Rukawa Kaede," I say. Hoping, for whatever reason that eludes me now, for a response. For a sign of recollection, that she remembers me.
She stops walking. A few seconds pass with neither of us moving an inch, as if this moment were frozen in time, just between us, while the rest of the world keeps turning.
And then, to my absolute relief, she turns around to face me.
"It's you."
----
So yeah. To be continued.
-Yelen